Organizing. Collapsing. Clumping. Categorizing. Cataloging. Grouping. There’s a time and a place for all those things, but it’s likely NOT when you’re in define or discovery.Within Innovation Engineering, there are many different thinking styles and preferences of people. But one powerful force that often works against us in innovation is the need to organize too much. It’s a temptation that happens in almost every situation where people create ideas.
“Oh, it looks like we have lots of ideas around this thing.”
“Oh, it seems like these ideas are all for this customer.”
“Oh, I think all these ideas will use this same technology.”
....”Let’s put them together!”
When you hear this sentiment or some version of it, resist. Say NO!
What you don’t see when you organize to the nth degree is that you give up something really key - depth and clarity. And if we’re working to increase speed and decrease risk, we absolutely need depth and clarity. Remember, the PDMA cites clarity as one of the key ingredients to a successful development and deployment project, without it you dramatically reduce your speed to market and increase your risk.
So if you lead teams and it’s decision time - resist the temptation. Let ideas breathe for a while. Let them go along their own path. Let them develop deeply and clearly for a while. Because if you mush ideas together too soon you’re left with a soup of nothingness versus sharp clear ideas that you can understand and act on quickly, and save the sorting for later.